As families of victims and survivors of police brutality, we know the gap between what the justice process after police killings is supposed to look like—and what it actually looks like.
We’re writing a report that captures this, but we need your help.
We are raising $3,000 to cover the costs of producing a grassroots report.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/after-the-bullet-a-grassroots-report–2/x/28099572#/
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“Mama mwizi! Mama mwizi!” Mother of a thief. Kenyan police repeatedly shouted this at a mother in one of Nairobi’s informal settlements, for weeks after extrajudicially executing her son. The harassment continued until she had to move to a different part of town.
A mother would like a postmortem done on the body of her son, as evidence for future legal processes, but finds out that she would be charged 7,000 KES ($70) per bullet extracted. She cannot afford that and declines to have the postmortem done. She wonders if that is why police sometimes shoot even 12 bullets into a boy after he is already dead.
The viral video of “killer cop” Rashid shooting a young man on the ground point-blank, in broad daylight and surrounded by a dense crowd, has not resulted in any repercussions. Many expected it would because of how bald-faced it was, but not all evidence, even one as damning as this, can be used in court. For criminal cases in Kenya, those that do must be processed through…yes, the police.
A grandmother implores an eyewitness to the murder of her grandson to report to the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), but he refuses. He knows that eyewitnesses who have reported to IPOA have disappeared or been killed. Only those who remain silent survive.
Every time the date for new court proceedings nears, one mother cannot eat for two days prior. She can’t stop replaying the day of her son’s murder in her head. Her friends accompany her to court. They wait and wait. The magistrate doesn’t show up. It’s been deferred. Again.
Police violence—including brutality that leaves people permanently injured, lethal “riot control” around elections, and targeted extrajudicial executions—has risen to the forefront of public discourse. This is important. However, public attention often focuses only on the moments around the murder.
Too often the microphone is pointed at families of victims days after their loved ones’ death, but then taken away during the long, re-traumatizing journey that comes after the bullet. What comes after the bullet illuminates not only the politics that allowed these victims to be killed in the first place, but it also illuminates the path forward.
In terms of what comes after the bullet, there is still a lot that is opaque to the public, the media, and policymakers. That knowledge, that data, those organising strategies lie within the hands of those who understand best everything that comes after the bullet: the loved ones left behind once police maim, forcibly disappear, and murder. And specifically the loved ones who refuse to be silenced by the state machine, even though they know very well what the cost of doing that is.
